"Hopefully we'll win this auction. We're HUGE fans of
Stoner
Fluxx. We play every night before bed, without fail. The
deck we have we bought a few years ago, and the cards are so
sticky that it's near impossible to play. Thank you for giving
the world Stoner Fluxx. Huge fans." -- Lee
and Becca, comments regarding the auction at eBay of an unopened
copy of Stoner Fluxx

In
my last update I talked about
various preparations our household has been making for the possibility
of becoming dog-owners. Since then, the theoretical dog has become
a reality: her name is Molly and she's really very nice!

Like many aspects of my life as a 44 year old, the me of long
ago would never have believed you if you told me I would someday
own a dog, much less that I would have bonded with it almost
instantly. But it's true. Andy
Looney, former dog-hater,
now lives with a lovely little doggie and is delighted to be
doing so.

Molly is a blend of breeds, predominantly Pekinese, and she's
about 5 years old. She's friendly and well behaved and the only
reason her owners were giving her up was because of allergies
that had developed in one of the children in the household. So
actually, there's a very sad story in the midst of our happy
news, since our gain is another family's loss. Plus of course,
Molly is going through a strange transition too, suddenly being
taken away from her loved ones and not even being able to understand
why it had to happen and that her old master really won't be
coming back for her at some point soon.

But happily for us at least, the transition is going amazingly
well. I embraced this new change of life with an open mind and
a lot of positive energy, but even so I'm frankly astonished
at how quickly I've become her alpha male and she's become my
beloved pet.

I think a lot of our success is due to the care and patience
that went into our dog selection process. As noted, we've spent
a lot of time getting ready for this day. Obviously there was
also some luck involved, but we got a dog we're bonding well
with because we were picky and held out for a dog we knew we'd
have the best chances of bonding well with.

Much like myself, Kristin has never owned a dog before and
hasn't generally been fond of them, but she too is getting along
really well so far with Molly. Again, this success is largely
due to careful selection. "She's cool," Kristin says,
because "she doesn't do a lot of the things I find annoying
about dogs."

As for the cats, they too are taking this new invasion amazingly
well. Obviously they took a dim view at first, but again, it's
actually pretty astonishing how quickly they seem to have gotten
used to having a dog around. Perhaps the Nessa
training helped them prepare as well. Also, Molly had been
living with two cats in her old home, so she knows how to interact
with them.

Anyway, it's still pretty hard to believe, but the population
of Wunderland.Earth now includes a dog! And while all of us are
happy about it, none of us could be happiest than Alison, shown
here on the night Molly showed up, when her birthday cake also
became a congrats-on-finally-getting-a-dog cake.

Yay for Molly!

Thanks for reading, and have a great fortnight!

PS: For you other dog owners out there, have you
ever used a flexi retractable
cord leash? Wow, what an awesome invention! It's so much
better than a regular leash. It's amazing!

We had a mysterious lapse in postal service recently, which
suddenly resulted in the arrival of a bunch of never-delivered
mail from weeks and even months ago. The stale mail came with
a cover letter from our local postmaster, apologizing for the
mishap and hinting at some sort of strangeness that had been
the cause. Apparently our carrier (who'd always seemed like a
nice and reliable guy) had begun hiding peoples' mail in his
truck rather than delivering it. I wonder what went wrong here,
and what will happen next, and if I'll ever hear anymore about
our former mailman.

This week I finally got a gadget I've been lusting after
for as long as I've had a cellphone: A Hulger
P*Phone! It's an old-style telephone handset -- you know, on
a cord -- which plugs into my cellphone. I greatly prefer using
this larger, more comfortable phone for anything but the briefest
of calls. Plus it's just looks great, in a zany, retro way, to
be talking on a classic-style telephone handset in random public
settings.

"But in the ensuing months, the government's case unraveled,
exposing some unsettling truths about the way jailhouse informants
are used in America's courtrooms. In December 2006, all charges
against the family were dismissed. The federal judge who presided
over the trial was so upset about what happened in his courtroom
that he has since taken the rare step of speaking out about it
publicly. The legal fiasco was partly attributable to familiar
themes of racism and overly aggressive prosecution. But the Colomb
story is mostly about the war on drugs. It shows how the absurd
incentives created by the unaccountable use of shady drug informants
by police and prosecutors can quickly make innocent people look
very guilty." -- Radley Balko, "Guilty
Before Proven Innocent"